How to turn your Android device into the quintessential eReader

When it comes to distraction free reading, nothing beats an ereader. But when it comes to getting the most bang for your buck, the reading apps available for Android make that platform easily the best value.Between the save for later apps, ebook apps, PDF apps, comic apps, audiobook apps, news and feed reader apps, and web browsers, there are apps for just about all kinds of ereading.

And that's why I assembled this handy list of apps which you can use to turn your Android device into a superlative ereader.

PDF Readers

PDF is arguably the oldest and one of the most widely supported ebook formats. There are more apps which support it than you can shake a stick at, including the apps listed below as well as Kindle, Nook, office suite apps, and most of the ebook apps mentioned above.

eBook Subscription Services

Over the past year multiple tech companies launched services which let readers access vast catalogs for a monthly fee. Please note, the Kindle Unlimited service is available through the Kindle app for Android.

Magazines, Newspapers, and Aggregators

This is a pretty broad category that includes apps released by a single publication, apps which aggregate articles from multiple sources, and apps which sell you either single issues, subscriptions, or Netflix-style access.

Please note that several of the ebook apps mentioned above, including Kindle and Kobo, also support magazines and newspapers.

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Nate Hoffelder is the founder and editor of The Digital Reader:"I've been into reading ebooks since forever, but I only got my first ereader in July 2007. Everything quickly spiraled out of control from there. Before I started this blog in January 2010 I covered ebooks, ebook readers, and digital publishing for about 2 years as a part of MobileRead Forums. It's a great community, and being a member is a joy. But I thought I could make something out of how I covered the news for MobileRead, so I started this blog."

Could you write a late review of the T69 after 4 months? Because it seems that most users mention worsening experience – your post about the latest firmware upgrade was not very comforting. And if spec-wise the T68 is probably the most appealing device (an e-ink tablet running Android), the various feedbacks are quite mixed to say the least.

I just wanted to mention that Mantano also supports DRM epubs, and the last update mentions something about amplifying their support to add bookstores thatallowe ebook downloading whithin the application, although I haven’t tested it myself, I side load all my ebooks whith Calibre Companion, another useful app of you have a large library already organized in Calibre.

Just FYI, I’ve tried the mentioned PDF readers. I read a lot of large PDFs, many with embedded images, and have found the mentioned ones are slow in rendering large files, especially ezPDF. The one I found to be the fastest so far is EBookdroid. It is regularly updated, too.

With regards to the PDF readers on my Kobo Arc, I found that the best app is definitely the free Mantano Reader – like the UI, the book management and it’s really handy now that I have over a 100 PDF journal articles for my dissertation to read. Really easy to highlight, add notes and then extract the entries into a separate notes file. Also tried the Kobo collections Save For Later feature and it’s really good for saving website bookmarks. Still wish there was a way of combining the features of Kobo and Kindle, the tablets and readers would be fantastic.

Again, I’m not talking about e-Reader devices but android apps that function as an e-Reader, such as Moon+ or Mantano but also with support for inking so I can make handwritten annotations like in a paper book. I want to use the app on my Samsung Galaxy Note and make it into a dedicated eBook device now that I have a newer phone.

I have PDF annotating in EZPDF, what I don’t have is inking in e-pub. For some reason none of the available apps supports it, but they do support note taking, just wish that one of those would have ink support in its note taking feature.

As I understand it, inking is difficult in reflowable content because it has to be anchored to an absolute position. That might be possible with fixed layout Epub, but it’s very difficult to accomplish with reflowable Epub.

BTW, I saw your question over on MobileRead. I am watching it in the hope that someone can answer that question.

And sorry about confusing the issue earlier. It was just too early for me (before the affiance kicked in).

Mantano reader has extensive note-taking and highlighting features for epub and pdf, including being able to highlight a word or words, and attach an inked or typed note to it. (I have the premium version, not sure if the free version includes this feature.)